The chairman of the House intelligence committee says there is not a majority on the panel to support giving private companies custody of the federal government’s database of phone-call metadata.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) said he doesn’t think such a proposal, which he opposes, would clear his panel — the first time he’s made such a statement.

“Given my conversations, I think, today, that would have a hard time passing,” Rogers said, adding that he’s spoken with both Republicans and Democrats. Still, he said, the proposal is “still on the table.”

As part of its foreign-intelligence operations, the National Security Agency gathers information about phone calls, including the numbers involved and the time and duration of the call; this so-called metadata does not include the content of the conversation. The operation, which covers about 20% of U.S. calls, was disclosed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

President Barack Obama has proposed moving that database out of government hands to quiet privacy critics. One floated possibility is having phone companies keep the database, forcing the government to go through an extra step to search the records. Some worry that having private companies maintain such a database would create more privacy issues.

Such a move likely would require congressional approval. At the very least, telecom companies such as Verizon Communications and AT&T would want Congress to pass liability protection before they handle such sensitive data.